


and you, who raised me from ashes

by artanogon



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur Pendragon Returns (Merlin), Enemies to Friends, Everyone's bi, F/F, Found Family, Good Mordred (Merlin), Immortal Merlin (Merlin), Immortal Mordred (Merlin), Immortal Morgana (Merlin), M/M, Multi, POV Morgana (Merlin), Past Gwen/Morgana (Merlin), Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-Season/Series 05, Redeemed Morgana (Merlin), a bit of angst, everyone is bi EXCEPT morgana who is a powerful chaotic lesbian, it's disaster wizard trio shenanigans, merlin morgana and mordred share a flat and it's as chaotic as it sounds, the focus isn't the shipping, they deserved BETTER OKAY
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:20:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25000786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artanogon/pseuds/artanogon
Summary: Arthur comes back from Albion expecting a fight and old enemies. Instead, he finds his enemies have become his old manservant's friends. And they're living in a flat together.And the world's gone to shit.(It's not going to be an easy time.)
Relationships: Gaius & Merlin (Merlin), Gwen/Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin & Mordred & Morgana (Merlin)
Comments: 36
Kudos: 164





	1. beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> don't start another WIP, don't start another WIP, don't--
> 
> god fucking damnit
> 
> (spoilers for season 5 ahead)

At twenty-nine years old, Morgana dies. Emrys stabs her and watches her fall to the ground while Arthur stands by in the background. She is fallen from grace, abandoned and now killed by her former loved ones. It’s been only a day since she made Mordred’s grave, since she stood at the cairn and promised revenge for both of them. And just like that, the war is over. She’s gone, defeated. 

Except, a decade later, she comes back. 

She kidnaps and tortures a Camelot guard until she finds what has changed. Gwen rules Camelot now, Arthur is dead and gone, and Emrys has left. A lover ruling, a brother passed, a nemesis missing. She looks at the tall towers of the castle, a golden and prosperous kingdom and her heart burns with hatred. She wants them to suffer again. To pay.

(Haven’t they suffered enough, already? She can feel blood and lives on her hands. Feel the weight of Mordred’s corpse. She uses her scrying skills to look for Gwen, and finds her sitting alone in bed, twisting a signet ring in her hands. It’s Morgana’s room-- and cloaked in mourning black.)

(It’s been a decade, and the people still weep.)

She doesn’t attack Camelot again. She turns her back and goes to look for Emrys. Let Camelot live its own life. There’s only one person who really deserves to suffer at her hands now.

Somewhere along the way, she finds out that magic has been legalised in Camelot. Court Sorcerer is an actual position now, for heaven’s sake. What changed while she was gone? Was she the one who changed it? Or was what she did not enough?

Gwen legalised it. Of course she did. She’s always been the kind and reasonable one. 

She looks and wanders and plots with a vengeance. She doesn’t find Emrys for years (he’s gotten much better at hiding himself, with clever bolt holes and disguises and occasionally she catches a glimpse of him, but it’s not enough); instead, she finds Mordred.

She’s down by the lake of Avalon, hiding as another war rages (alright, maybe a small part of her is tired of war and blood and death), when a gloved hand and a torso clothed in Camelot chainmail rises from the lake, a boy with a head of curls and blue-grey eyes that she’s never forgotten. He freezes when he sees her, and she stands there in disbelief until he whispers her name. She abandons propriety, abandons restraint, and runs into the lake to hug him, heedless of the way her skirt is being soaked through. He freezes and then hugs her back, his arms still strong and warm. Her chest aches. 

_My friend, my child, my soldier, came home at last. Alive._

For the next hundreds of years while empires rise and fall, they fight again. A thousand scrapes with Emrys that leave them with blood and scars, whispered words in kingdoms to warn of approaching war, a vengeance towards those who criminalise magic. But it’s Emrys they seek most of all, hunting him constantly. 

That’s when they find out they can’t die. 

Morgana falls from a cliff a thousand feet up, she breaks her neck and every bone in her body and wakes up whole on the rocks a week later. Mordred takes seven arrows to the torso pushing her out of danger when the Saxons turn on their old masters. After two days of laying still and pale in the makeshift cot she’s made on her bed, he nearly scares the living daylights out of her when he comes into the kitchen and steals her bowl of oatmeal out of her hands. 

And Emrys, somehow, never does either. It’s as if none of their efforts have any effect. He is older, more ancient, magic from before the dawn of time sings in his bloodline and he is untouchable. 

Somewhere, around the thousand-year-mark, Morgana gives up. She stops seeking Emrys wherever he goes, stops plotting and fighting and dreaming of gory death, a million ways to kill her nemesis. It’s not that she’s lost that hatred, because she _hasn’t_ , it still _burns_ that he could have been there for her and he didn’t, that he sided against her. 

It’s just that she’s _tired_.

In some way, Mordred is too. He spends less time standing at her side plotting now, more time sitting on the upholstered chairs and staring at the floor like it holds the answers to whatever he’s conflicted about inside. He fights more often than she does, and he fights in cold blood-- she watched him rip a grown man’s throat out with his teeth once. Centuries of black magic have made her bitter. The same years have turned Mordred feral. All she knows is that he had a run-in with some dark creature once, something that turned the grey in his eyes to an inhuman silver and made him a beast hungry for blood. He’s normal, for the most part, still the druid boy she watched over for years, but something else prowls under his skin. 

The last time he and Emrys went head-to-head, he came back with a burn scar disfiguring his left side that she barely managed to heal. His looks are still warped. He’s given Emrys a fair share of scars as well, with clever swordplay and what little magic Morgana can teach him, but it’s not enough. Mordred just isn’t nearly as powerful as either of them. 

He’s not giving up. He keeps fighting. She doesn’t understand why. 

A few of their schemes work, but more and more end in mass destruction. Once they blow up an entire fief; the loss of lives is astronomical. It’s when she walks in the aftermath of that massacre, sees blood on the ground and bodies contorted in death, women and children, all innocents, that she finally has to face what she’s done. None of them deserved to die. 

And she killed them. 

She stops fighting. 

\---

The next time she sees Emrys, it’s in England during the witch hunts. She died on a pyre not so long ago, screaming for it to end. Of course, she came back. Now she watches her sisters die-- most of the women killed don’t have a spark of magic. But far too many of them do, and Morgana is one of the last priestesses left. The others didn’t come back. 

She made a rookie mistake, let her face be seen on the carriage ride to Emrys’ estate, and she was recognised. She should have made a disguise of some sort, but she wanted to appear as she really was when she saw him. 

Now, she stands on the battlements as a gathering crowd roars about witches below. They can’t see her from where she is, but she can see them. And the battlements can be accessed from a trapdoor below. She could go down and disturbe Emrys herself, but she waits instead. The wind whips at her hair and clothes, roars in her ears. Emrys’ estate is more a fortress than a home. Is he afraid of her and Mordred? Is there some other reason behind it?

It’s loud, here, and quiet too. 

The trapdoor opens. 

Emrys steps out, a wall gun slung across his back. He doesn’t need it, she knows he’s powerful enough to destroy this entire castle with a flick of his finger if he wanted to. Her oldest, most powerful enemy. His hair is longer, wilder, but he still looks like he’d just walked out of Camelot at Arthur’s side. Inseparable, the two of them. Together until Arthur’s end. 

She’d be lying if she said she didn’t feel a bit guilty about it. 

(Despite everything, she misses her brother. She misses friends and safety. She ought to be used to it by now, but she wants more. She wants so much more.)

Emrys is clad in the blue silk and velvet of a noble— she wonders how he is living now. What name he hides under, what wares he trades in. When did she start wondering like this? When did she forget who he is? What made her start to care?

The silence hangs heavy between them. Emrys, finally, breaks it. 

“Well, Morgana?” The words are a challenge (and yet an olive branch, of a sort). He adds nothing more, just spreads his hands wide. His posture is tense; he’s expecting her to attack. She has every time she’s encountered him before. Why should it be different now? 

And yet, it is. 

Instead, she shakes her head and lets her arms fall to her sides. Her defensive magic flickers out. “I’m done.”

He watches her, considering. The crowd outside the gates is roaring, pounding and calling for blood, but they seem so far away. It’s like they’ve been shielded from the world. There is nothing to hide them from each other. Just them, as they are. Worn to dull edges by a millennia of fighting, no longer a sharp blade against a whetstone, but old swords hammered to dented pieces and never repaired. 

He won’t look her in the eye, and for once, he seems just as tired as she feels. He’s always looked young, but the years are weighing on him. She sees it in the slump of his shoulders, in the shadows under his eyes. How did she ever look at him and not see the suffering he carries in plain sight? 

“That makes two of us.” 

For a moment, she wants to reach out, offer him her hand, offer a truce. Then she clamps down on that pitiful voice inside her that still cries out for love and acceptance, for a friend, and gives him a cool nod instead. The mobs outside are tearing the gate down, and their time is limited. And really, what else is there to say? 

She raises a hand in farewell before dissipating into shadows, and something like a smile touches his mouth. It looks almost like a promise. 

They don’t see each other again for almost three hundred years. 

Morgana begins to live her own life, learn what she enjoys outside of revenge and an old, bitter vendetta. Mordred drops in occasionally, but she sees less of him too. She makes friends, takes lovers (once, a farmwoman with chocolate-brown hair who looks so much like Gwen that sometimes Morgana sits up at night in their bed and cries), and watches those loved ones die. Still, she does not change. 

She lets her old life go. 

She throws out old talismans, mandrake root and puppet dolls and the things she kept for dark magic. She doesn’t let her power as a High Priestess go, because magic is who she is and she has earned this power, fought and bled and died for it. Instead, she uses it in better ways. She becomes a healer. A fortune-teller. A guide. 

She stops killing people and starts helping them.

It should be harder, but somehow it isn’t. She was meant to be good; her magic wasn’t meant to hurt. She was lost. Abandoned. Scared. 

So was Mordred. 

Seventy years since she turned her face from the hissing dark, she tracks him down with the scrying bowl and pays him a visit in Paris. He’s different now— his hair is long, and his eyes dark (and he’s wearing one of those horrid white wigs that are coming into fashion nowadays), but he’s still young. Still sad, just like her. And, she finds, in mourning for another lover lost. 

She offers him her hand and motions to the distant lands beyond. He takes it, walks out the door with her, and never looks back.

The world is turning. Technology evolves and war breaks out, England against America and then the French too. The wars are so different from the way Camelot fought against Morgana’s army of Saxons. It’s no longer swords and maces and armour. Instead, they fight with ships and cannons and muskets, bayonets and sabers a last resort. The world is changing, but she stays the same. 

(Mordred has the same hairstyle as her, now. She chuckles about it, privately. Sometimes it’s like they’re mother and son.)

One night, he slumps against her shoulder and watches the naval battles on the sea outside their French chateau on the coast. She puts her arm around him and hums absentmindedly. The roar of the cannons is deafening, but she’s not worried about losing sleep. The nightmares are so strong, they always have been, that she stays up for nights on end and relies on magic and coffee to keep her awake. The headaches and malaise are better than waking up screaming in terror about futures she cannot change. There is so much war ahead. 

Mordred falls asleep on her shoulder. She puts a blanket around him and stays by his side in case he wakes from a nightmare of his own. 

(Mother and son, indeed.)

Then, revolution comes to France and she finally sees Emrys again. 

She meets him at the hospital, where she uses what few medical talents she has and a spark of magic to cure people. He’s using all the healing talents he learned from Gaius, warding off infections and getting rid of bullets and amputating limbs, his eyes flashing subtle gold at times when a case seems too severe to cure. They don’t talk at all, but they help each other while Mordred roars through the streets, doing what he can in the thick of the action. They save a lot of lives. 

They still don’t talk. But that’s alright. 

The revolution doesn’t end until the streets are soaked in blood, and at that point, Morgana flees. She can’t stand it any longer-- maybe that makes her a coward, but Mordred stumbles back in the house with a bloodied eye and rope burns on his body, and she watches manors burn to the ground, but she has to get them out of here. Mordred’s still a _child_ , barely 19 before he was gone and never aged again. She won’t let him get hurt any more. 

When she leaves out the back entrance, Emrys is sitting on the garden wall, watching. He’s in a faded brown coat and breeches with faint bloodstains on the cuffs. They’re not from a fight. 

“You’re leaving,” he says flatly. Morgana bristles angrily at what sounds like an accusation and draws herself up tall, with the learned rigid spine of royalty. 

Her voice is cold. “And what of it?”

“So am I.” The words aren’t what she’s expecting and she startles a bit. Emrys continues to surprise her, and he surprises her even more with his next words. “You two should come with me.”

“Why? I don’t need your charity or your help. Mordred doesn’t either. Or have you forgotten everything you’ve done?”

He watches her, then speaks quietly. Somehow, it’s even more unsettling than if he were yelling. “Have you forgotten what _you’ve_ done? I’m not trying to shrug it away, but I’m not going to start fighting you again now. I’m trying to forgive you, Morgana.” His eyes are still eerily blue. It feels like they can cut through to her core, her secrets and shame. “I want to try.”

“So do I,” Mordred cuts in from where he stands on the steps. She hadn’t even heard him approaching. He’s cut his hair again, curling back around the nape of his neck. He looks like a knight of the round table again, his clothes cut from russet-red fabric. His face is vulnerable, fragile-- hopeful. He stands square and faces Emrys again. He looks so young. “I hurt you. I hurt my family, the one home I had in Camelot. And what I did to Arthur… he showed me kindness. I should have been better. And I’m sorry.”

Emrys seems angry. He evidently hasn’t tried to forgive Mordred yet. But he looks at the boy a bit more, and finally some of the tightness in his face relents. Mordred looks near tears (he’s just a _boy_ ) but still stands strong. Waiting for Emrys’ verdict.

“You’ve tried to kill me multiple times,” Emrys says carefully. 

“You’ve done the same.”

“You’ve killed innocents.”

Morgana’s temper flares again. She cuts into the conversation. “You abandoned us. We both needed someone with magic, someone who we could trust to back us up. When we needed you, you abandoned us.”

“Because you were going to kill Arthur!”

“You _created_ that future, Emrys! If you had trusted us, given us a home or something to hold onto, proved Arthur was good, would we have done it? Or would we have stood by you? Who _really_ killed Arthur?” The words hit home, and Emrys slumps like he’s been shot through the chest. She catches one glimpse of his stricken expression, at the weight of the thought crashing into him. The guilt she feels at the sight almost chokes her. 

“I don’t think that helped, Morgana,” Mordred whispers and Morgana resists the urge to cuff him on the head. 

There’s no sound now but the waves against the shore and distant cries of gulls. The tension is so thick in the air it’s tangible, like the wind itself has ground to a halt in frozen time. Emrys doesn’t look up. His shoulders are shaking. 

Finally, Morgana can’t stand it. “That was wrong of me,” she whispers through a tight throat. 

“It was,” Merlin agrees. Without another word, he vanishes. 

Just like that, he’s gone, and Morgana’s left staring. Mordred crosses the remaining distance across the lawn, watching the space where he stood. “Well, that was a catastrophe. And just when I was starting to hope.” There’s a calloused feel to his tone, but hurt lurks underneath it. The fight wounded him, like a scab torn off of a healing scratch and setting it all to bleeding again. 

That’s the dangerous thing about hoping. 

“It wasn’t my fault,” she says defensively. Well, she can’t really say that, can she? “And besides, it was true.” 

He puts a hand on her shoulder, gently, like he’s afraid she’ll hit him for the touch. She wonders how much her rages and fits have scared him, if that’s why he still treads lightly around her. The thought makes her chest ache with even more guilt. How can she be angry at others when she’s just as much to blame as they are? 

It feels hard to breathe again. Like grieving, when she watched Gwen’s funeral pyre burn and lost her lover to unforgiving cliff rocks, like when she carried Mordred to his grave and the responsibility for Arthur’s death hit her harder than ever. 

“I’m sorry, Mordred.” Her eyes sting now too. “I should have been better for you. I poisoned you against life. I… ruined the kind boy that you were. And scared you.”

“You did,” Mordred agrees, but his hand is firmer on her shoulder. She dares to look at him, and almost crumples at the honesty in his eyes, the light and innocence that vanished for so long when they bathed themselves in the blood of those who they thought were enemies. “But that’s okay.” It’s not, she knows it isn’t. “Just… try, alright? Let’s try to be better.”

“I don’t know how.” And she _doesn’t_ , she’s wandered so far back into the dark she doesn’t remember how to stand in the light. Even when she left her old life, the anger and bitterness and desire to _hurt_ stayed with her. She’s been wounded again and again. She’s lost her way. 

She’s so lost she doesn’t even know where to start. 

Mordred takes her hand. “Me neither. But we can still try.”

She nods, and looks towards the ocean in the distance. It stretches on for what looks like eternity, and the sun sets over it, setting the world to distant flame. It should be scary— it might have been, once. Now it looks like a new beginning. 


	2. reconciliation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Old enemies become something close to friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it took so long, y’all! turns out ao3 backdated the original post date as well. 
> 
> many thanks to rangerpippin for betaing!

The Great War is tearing Europe apart. Mordred was dragged into enlisting, and even though she _knows_ he’ll be fine, that he won’t die, terror still drags its claws through Morgana’s heart. For months, she watches soldiers come home with limbs blown off, hears horror stories of the trenches and massacres, rats and plague. There is no honour in war like this, there’s hardly any honour in war anyways, maybe there never was-- but when they fought in Camelot, it was life or death on a battlefield with swords and magic. 

Now, men hunker down in trenches as they choke on poison gas and the ground blows apart around them. She’s not slept in weeks, because she dreams of Mordred buried alive by a collapsing trench in the rain, of young boys choking on their own shredded lungs, of blood and screaming and tears. 

Once, news reaches her of a rumour about a man on the French side of the war, who charges through shells and bullets while his comrades die around him but he carries on without a scratch. She finds a soldier Mordred had mentioned was in his company discharged with a nerveless arm sitting in a cafe and hears the story from him firsthand. He speaks with fear in his tone of gold eyes and evil spirits, of terror down to his very bones, how he fired his musket and the man batted the bullet aside like it was a ball.

_Merlin_ , her mind whispers. Of course he would fight for the French and English. 

Why isn’t she?

(And who’s to stop her? Why did she abandon her country, what loyalty does she owe Germany? They only intended to live here temporarily.)

She sends a raven to Mordred on the battlefield and leaves for England, where Merlin and Aithusa’s cavern and the lake of Albion await. Where old memories linger, memories that she’s run from for years. It’s time to stop running. Time to face Merlin— not as an enemy this time, but as a former… well, is friend even the right word for it? Maybe it wasn’t.

She’d like it to be now.

When she arrives at Blackfriars Bridge after a ferry ride, he’s waiting for her. The years and the war have not been kind to him, and now scars and lines and memories cut deep into his face. She knows there’s worse to come, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t tell him that. 

The first thing she says, before he can even speak, is, “I’m sorry.”

It seems to give him pause. Some tension hangs on a thread between them, drawn tight and steady, but too much pressure and the string will snap. Too little and the spell will be broken. It will be over, and she will have failed again.

He frowns. “I… I don’t know, Morgana. I don’t know anymore.” He turns out to look at the fog beyond, a spring storm hovering on the horizon. “I don’t know who I am. Who you are. What to think anymore.”

“I don’t either.”

He waits. “Where’s Mordred?”

“On the battlefield,” she replies, and doesn’t miss the way his lips tighten. He doesn’t like the idea of Mordred fighting on the German’s side. She doesn’t blame him, mostly. And yet, who is he to judge? How are they really so different, when they both send young boys home lacking limbs and full of bullet holes? What really makes one of them better than the other? Has there ever been that distinction, has either one of them ever been truly right?

She moves to the rail, wraps her hands around the iron and watches the Thames roar down below them. She remembers before this river had its name, when the land around them was green and fertile and free, how there was a meadow where Big Ben stands now. How there was a grove where the Church is-- before religion was everywhere, before their stories had been shaped and sanded by time to a story that society wanted to tell. They always made her the villain in those tales. 

They never talked about how she was simply scared. 

“How things have changed,” she murmurs, almost to herself. Merlin catches the words, glances towards her, then looks back out. They share the solemn view together, her heart heavy with grief for something she’s lost, though she’s not sure what it is. Maybe she mourns how much she took Camelot and happiness for granted. Maybe she mourns for immortality, those she’s loved and lost. “Who are we, Merlin?”

“You called me Merlin,” he says, sounding surprised. “Not Emrys.”

It gives her pause, then she nods. “I stopped doing that a long time ago. You’re not… some great and mythical enemy. You’re just… you. A bumbling manservant who destiny decided to eat alive.”

He laughs. It sounds hollow. “I don’t believe in destiny much, anymore.”

“Do you really not believe in it anymore? Or are you just unwilling to accept it exists?”

He frowns at her. She doesn’t remember ever seeing him smile since Arthur died. “Would you believe in destiny, if it only told you that you were going to kill the ones you loved?”

“But I did, didn’t I?” She plucks at a thread of her coat absentmindedly. “I did, whether it was my choice or not. And they won’t come back. I don’t know if I could have even changed it.”

Merlin hesitates, then moves as if to speak. “There’s...”

A storm bursts upon them with a sudden crash of thunder and gush of rain, and the first streak of lightning splits the air. Somewhere close by, there’s the sound of a shrill scream. They both bolt up and turn towards the noise, and Morgana freezes dead in her tracks. There in front of them is a _fuath_ , a web-handed water spirit, with a young girl clutched tight in its grasp. She can see the child grasping and shrieking

She’s not seen one of them in centuries, not since a half-drowned town was overtaken by them— what does it mean to see one now? 

She shoves the thought back for a time when she can consider it and violently shoves Merlin’s shoulder, snapping him out of the stunned trance he seems stuck in. _Fuaths_ are malevolent flesh-eaters, and they have to save the girl quickly before she goes back under the water, where she won’t stand a chance. She’s moving before she thinks about it, from years of practise, her hand flying out to cast a spell. Merlin seizes her hand before she can, and she turns to him in anger. 

“There are people watching,” Merlin hisses. “You need to conceal yourself first or it’ll be the witch hunts all over again.”

“They can see the monster, can’t they?”

“People nowadays have an extraordinary ability to be blind to things they don’t want to see.” He turns towards the people on the banks nearby and hisses the old language’s word for blindness, his eyes flaring gold. Once, he would have rather died than dared to show his magic around her. 

He turns back to her and nods, and Morgana flings her hand out. Her voice echoes with the thunder while she incants, lightning and storm and water twisting around the creature as it screeches and thrashes in the water. 

“Get the little girl,” she chokes out through gritted teeth, screaming at the elements to _bend_ to her will. It has always taken everything she has to manage storms, because they are like her— they rail at confinement, they are untamed and vengeful and near feral. 

The storm becomes her blood, and she wraps the monster so tightly in water she sees red. The din is deafening, and she vaguely registers Merlin moving, leaping from the rail to the waters below and roaring in the ancient language, the lightning arcing from his hand in the shape of a sword. It pierces through the spirit and skitters down its limbs. Merlin barely manages to pull the girl away in time. 

The monster goes down in a swirl of ashes and the girl safe in Merlin’s arms. 

Back on the bridge, she watches them with wide eyes, then points to Morgana. She can’t be more than three years old, and on the bank, Morgana can see a woman wandering around in confusion. The girl’s mother, most likely. The girl blinks and reaches forward. “Magic.” 

Some part of Morgana’s blood still chills when the word is spoken aloud. Some of it is this lingering, festering fear from the days when magic meant death and a noose around your neck, from when it meant the axe and the pyre. But she reaches out in turn, and takes the little girl’s hand. “Yes. Magic. Magic saved your life. Remember that, and remember not to fear it.”

She nods, then smiles. “Nice witchy woman.”

Merlin chuckles. It’s the first time she can remember hearing him laugh for so incredibly long.

“That’s me,” she says, her smile widening. She can’t help but like this young child, some motherly feeling that she normally only feels around Mordred rising in her chest. It’s never been her first instinct to nurture or care for, nor has it been any kind of domestic feeling at all. And yet, sometimes, her heart softens. And she’s starting to regret that less and less. “Now go home to your mother, and don’t tell her about this, alright? We witches like to live in secrecy.”

She turns to Merlin. “Are you a witch too?”

“No, little one, I’m a warlock. Now listen to her and go to your mother. I think she’s worried about you.”

The child nods, and he lets her down, and they watch her stumble her way back to where her mother awaits on the riverbank, the covering spell lifted. Merlin looks over at her, and he’s still smiling. The sight makes her oddly happy. 

Then, she realises. “You told her.”

“So did you.”

“I’m not attacking you. I just… you weren’t afraid to.”

He shakes his head and gives a low, sad laugh, the kind you give when you’re too tired to care or pretend that you do. The water drips off of the edge of his hat. “I still am, Morgana. That fear doesn’t go away.”

She closes her eyes, and behind them there is fire. There are the memories of Uther’s reign, of being spat on and condemned and wanting to tear her own skin off when she found out she was a witch. “No,” she agrees. “It doesn’t.”

The storm is battering down on them now, soaking into her clothes and flattening her hair limp to her head. The lightning crashes into the water down below, but neither of them move. Merlin finally opens an umbrella he pulls from the inside of his overcoat, and motions that she can stand under it if she wishes. Morgana’s fine with getting drenched by the rain, but this is more than just a casual offer. It’s an expression of trust. 

She joins him under the umbrella. It’s quieter now, only the sounds of vehicles in the background. Most people are headed home to escape the deluge. 

“ _Forbearnan,_ ” she whispers, giving the spell the intent of warmth and heat, not fire. Their clothes both dry and she stops shivering. It’s easier to think when she isn’t freezing cold. 

The wind picks up. Morgana ignores it. “I did mean it. I truly am sorry.” She swallows, keeps staring at the water below. Despite reflection, despite talking this over with Mordred, despite her best attempts to do good deeds, she doesn’t know how to look at Merlin. She still doesn’t know how to face it all. Sometimes, it’s just too hard to try. “I was wrong.”

“About which part?” His voice is soft, but not the menacing sort of soft. Something more vulnerable. 

She shakes her head. “All of it.”

“Some of it wasn’t wrong.” She finally looks up at that, her curiosity piqued, and finds him looking across the river to the city beyond, where a young group of boys run through the streets. His brow is creased. He seems almost sad. “You deserved better. We all did.”

Somewhere out there, Mordred is on a battlefield again. How many battles has he seen in his lifetime? How many has he fought beside and watched die? How much blood is on his hands; how many men has he torn apart with the claws and teeth of some unholy creature? (None of them are ‘holy’ by any definition, they have always been evil and a blight in the eyes of man, because people are so quick to condemn things they can’t understand.)

He deserved a better life than that. He still does. 

“Come on,” Merlin says, snapping her out of her train of thought. “It’s only getting worse out here. My house isn’t far.”

She blinks, not fully comprehending. “What?”

“Do you have a place to stay?”

No, she doesn’t. She decided she’d figure it out when she got here, she wouldn’t have been able to plan ahead much anyways. She’d thought of finding a house and then sending a letter to Mordred so he knew where to find her, but that didn’t give her much help right now. But if Merlin was willing--

“I don’t.”

“Come on, then.” He offers her his arm like a perfect gentleman, the decorum of the last few hundred years ingrained smoothly into his movements. She takes it and they walk off the bridge, the rain pouring around them. They don’t speak, but their silence is companionable, and he doesn’t seem like he’s going to explode like a shell any second. The water runs through the stones of the cobbled streets, soaking her shoes. London is lit up by the work of the lamplighters now, less dark and bloody than she remembers. It smells better too. 

It seems like an alright place to stay. 

Merlin’s house is bigger than expected, and spacious. The decorations are in warm shades of red and brown, with a couple of armchairs and a fireplace that Merlin sends crackling with a wave of his hand. It seems oddly luxurious, and she wonders where he got the money for it. 

She asks him as much and he waves it aside. “A well-placed friend and some prudent investments. It turns out they trust you more at the bank if you look like a snobbish old man.”

She laughs a little. “Your famous wizened, white-bearded disguise.”

“He has a name, actually. Dragoon the Great.”

“You’re so full of yourself.” She’s laughing harder now. She wonders if Merlin’s ever made her laugh before. 

“No, _Dragoon’s_ full of himself.”

By now she’s just incredulous. “You _are_ Dragoon!”

“Irrelevant,” he says dismissively and shrugs off his coat. “You’re welcome to stay here for a while. Until you figure out if there’s somewhere else you want to live. I’m going to go make tea.”

Three months later, she’s still living there. 

Mordred shows up after a month goes by, with heavy dark circles under his hollow eyes and old shrapnel scars cutting lines into his face. He walks normally, doesn’t seem injured, but he flinches when she moves to hug him and doesn’t say a word. Merlin follows her to the open door, looks out and sees Mordred with all the colour drained from his face, and seems to soften. He dusts the flour on his hands off on the towel hanging from his belt, then opens the door wider. “You can come in.”

A while later, Mordred lays on the couch, staring at the ceiling blankly. Morgana joins Merlin in the kitchen where he’s baking a loaf of bread, watches the clear summer sky from the kitchen window.

“He can stay,” Merlin says abruptly, awkwardly. 

She turns to look at him. His forearms are still dusted with flour, his baggy shirt rolled up to his elbows. He still doesn’t care much for looking dignified, not here at home. 

When did she start calling this place home?

Is it home?

“You don’t mind?”

He sighs, joins her at the window. He trimmed his hair again recently, and if it weren’t for the prominent shadow of a beard, he would look just like they’re in the castle kitchens at Camelot. She knows now why he chose this place, expensive as it might be. With the stone floors, the red decorations and old style, it feels like a piece of history from a better time brought back to them. 

“I know what that war was like. It was worse than hell, Morgana. I’ve never seen anything like it and I never want to again. He needs time to recover. At the very least, I can be there for him. I can try. To be a bit better. Kinder.”

Her heart cracks a tiny bit at the gentleness in his tone. “He said almost the exact same thing once. About trying.”

He smiles. He’s smiling more often now. She’s met some of his friends, fielded a lot of comments about them being a couple. She knows it isn’t standard decorum in this age for friends of the opposite sex to live together, but it works for them. She takes the spare bedroom (though she still rarely sleeps), and she isn’t interested in men that way anyways. But that’s not to be spoken of. 

Merlin, at the least, is accepting of it. 

(She remembers the way he looked at Arthur. It might be more than acceptance; it might be solidarity. She hasn’t got around to asking him yet.)

She doesn’t know at what point exactly this place became a beacon of warm light that she can come back to under the grey London sky, at what point his voice became as familiar as her own. At what point his anger and fear was replaced by goodwill. Sometimes, he walks into the living room at night and finds her sitting in one of the armchairs. He’s taken to making them chocolate to drink. He understands it and never begrudges her. He’s so nice that on her worst days it’s almost infuriating. 

But there aren’t many of those days anymore. She’s healing from something she didn’t know she needed to heal from. 

“We can be gone eventually if you like,” she offers. Some quiet part of her hopes he’ll welcome them to stay, that he won’t want them gone. That this isn’t temporary.

He pauses, bites his lip, and then nods. “Alright.”

The words are like a needle to her heart, popping a small bubble of hope. When did she start letting herself hope again? She stopped a long time ago, and she certainly shouldn’t be falling into delusions now. They were rivals for a thousand years and they’re barely friends now. 

But she lets it slide, and when the bread is done baking, she brings some to Mordred and make s him eat. His movements are mechanical, controlled, lifeless. He doesn’t talk to her at all and it’s frustrating. She stays by his side until the sun is setting and they have to light the lamps. Using electricity is still so odd for her, how the world has shifted from fire to gas to these new phenomena of automobiles and electricity. She’s called friends on the telephone for at least twenty years now but it’s still such a shock. 

She wonders so much now at how the world has changed. The nostalgia chokes her sometimes. 

She tries to convince Mordred to sleep, but he waves her away and continues staring at the ceiling. A car backfires somewhere near them and he jumps. He curls into a ball and shakes, slaps her hand when she tries to touch his shoulder. She moves away instinctively to the hallway. Merlin walks over, talks to him so softly Morgana can’t hear him. Whatever he says, it seems to calm Mordred. 

Merlin walks back to her, takes her hand in both of his. It’s rare that he touches people, his comfort is in gifts and quiet words, not in physical affection. Yet, the movement is comforting. “Give him time. He just needs time.”

She nods, though she still feels like there’s glass stuck in her throat. She hates feeling helpless. “I will.”

“Take care.” He squeezes her hands, then heads down the hallway. He turns back part of the way. “Get some sleep if you can. I’ll check on him in the night.”

The statement’s oddly comforting. She nods again, then looks at Mordred one last time. On impulse, she crosses to the linens closet and pulls out a thick blanket that came in handy during the winter, draping it over him. He doesn’t look at her but seems to relax a fraction. 

“Goodnight, Mordred,” she whispers and switches off the lantern. 

She’s walking down the hall to her room when she hears the very faint “goodnight” he gives in return. It’s the first time she’s heard him speak all day, and a little bit of her dark mood lifts. A little bit of hope comes back. 

\---

Slowly, slowly, Mordred comes back to them. The days are oddly nice for the English climate, the skies blue and the air warm. It takes him a week to walk around the house again, to start responding to things and making conscious decisions beyond his vegetative state. The first thing she does when he’s properly responsive is tell him to take a bath, he stinks to high heaven. She hears Merlin, coming in the door with groceries from the market, burst into laughter. 

Sometimes she’ll be sitting in the living room and reading one of the books Merlin’s kept (he stole all of his favourite books from Gaius’ chambers when he finally left Camelot, which is utterly typical for him, and she still laughs about it), which is full of fascinating history on magical creatures. There aren’t many of them around today, but it’s anyways a reminder of that was. Eventually, he starts making conversation with her. At one point, he inquired as to whether Merlin’s kept the medical books. 

“Just one,” Merlin says when she asks. “Camelot needed the rest. Most of the information's very out of date anyways. The only helpful parts will be for magic— they haven’t advanced in that at all yet.”

Just the opposite, actually. Magic is being forgotten in this new world of technology and development. 

Still, she finds the book and gives it to Mordred. He starts talking to Merlin about studying healing. He’s tired of war and killing, and he wants to help like they do. Even if his magic is inadequate, he still has enough to save lives. 

She watches him sow back up an old small pouch that he’s had for a few decades now, something given to him as a gift by an old friend, he said. His fingers are nimble and clever and he focuses on it intently. He’ll be a good doctor and a better surgeon. He’s learned extraordinary patience by now, too. He isn’t a boy anymore, but a man, and he’s so different than he used to be. 

He starts joining her on walks around the city, and marvels at how quiet it is compared to a war zone. He doesn’t talk about what he went through in the trenches, what ultimately sent him home as pale as a corpse, but the little she’s gleaned horrifies her. She never wants him to have to go through that again. 

(And yet, her visions tell her of more war. Of a war far greater and more terrifying than the people can imagine. They call this the Great War, but what will they do when there is one worse?) 

(She doesn’t know, so she muffles her screams in the night and clenches her eyes shut and prays that the future she sees will not come to pass.) 

After a month goes by, they take a trip to the Alpine mountains. The hills are wonderful and wild and free and they hike up them easily. Summer is at the end of its flush, but nothing is dying yet, and the sky is cloudless all the way up here. Mordred runs into one of the meadows and laughs, falls into the grass and grins at the sky. 

“I’ve missed nature,” he says, grinning, while Morgana sits on the grass beside him. Merlin climbs the rest of the way up the hill and joins them, a basket in his hand. They didn’t bring too much, they don’t need to when they’ve all lived in the wild for years and are prepared for anything the mountain throws at them. A thousand years of experience and a dose of magic do tend to come in handy. 

He sets out a blanket, playfully grumbling the whole time. “Of course, leave the servant to do all the work while you two frolic in the hills.”

“My apologies, _Lord Emrys_ ,” she teases in return. Her heart is light for once and she delights in the feeling. She’s grown to hate the shadows and dark that she once made her home in, she doesn’t want to look back at them again, so she turns her face to the sun and tries to forget. “We are but your humble servants.”

“Based on who carried the basket up here, I’d say _you’re_ not the servant.”

They share a picnic together, peacefully, and Merlin starts making shapes of the clouds, dragons and horses and objects. Mordred manipulates one into a crude symbol and Morgana gives an offended scoff, cuffing him on the back of the head. He giggles as he pitches forward into the grass. 

Merlin reaches up like he’s conducting a symphony, turns the cloud above them into a giant M, and then turns it to fog that crashes down on them. Morgana gets drenched and he laughs himself hoarse before creating a burst of warm air to dry them all off.

It’s idyllic and carefree for a moment, but then, from behind them: 

“Witchcraft!” a voice cries in German, and Morgana’s blood turns to ice. Merlin jolts around to see an older man watching them, his roughened face drained of colour. He wears the uniform of a soldier, and it’s an abrupt reminder that the war hasn’t ended. She recognises the epaulettes from the way Mordred described them— he’s a major. 

Morgana stands, rearranges her skirts and posture to the demure and innocent look she’s learned over time, and attempts to pacify him. “It’s alright, sir, there’s nothing to concern you—”

“ _Witch_ ,” he snaps, and turns to run, crying out in heavily accented English about devils and witches. He’s making a ruckus and Merlin looks torn between running away and stopping him, so Morgana makes the decision for him. She reaches out a hand and snaps out a command in the old tongue, killing him where he runs. No one seems to have noticed or those that have don’t seem to care, and just like that, it’s quiet again with only the hiking party in the distance heading onto a different route. 

She turns around, and her companions are staring at her in stunned silence. 

“What?” she asks defensively. “What would you have done?”

“You killed him.” Merlin shakes his head, disgust and fear battling in his tone. Of course. Despite everything he’s been through, he’s still such a pacifist, still so gentle and unwilling to hurt people even when it gets him hurt in the process. 

“I did what I had to do to shut him up. I’ve lived without persecution for so long now. I’m _not_ going back into hiding.”

Merlin’s lips tighten, and he shakes his head. Mordred’s face has gone ashen. 

Just like that, the carefree mood is gone. And Morgana’s reminded why she was an outsider in the first place. 

They pack up and go home. The Alps have no more enjoyment left to offer them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this may end up being a lot longer than i thought it was going to be. oops


	3. changing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How do you know when someone's become your friend?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am so sorry this took me FOREVER but i will try to be faster in future

The war finally ends in 1918. People cheer in the streets, cheer for safety and treaties and victory and their men coming home. Merlin and Mordred spent the last part of the war at home with her, they didn’t go back and she’s glad of it, because as time dragged on it only got worse. Now the world changes again. The war has devastated the workers of Britain, Mordred’s job in the mines has been shut down and they’re all thankful once again for the prudent money saved over the course of their lifetimes. 

The crowd takes up a cry of suffrage, and women’s suffragettes rise up. Morgana attends their meetings without hesitation, because she has faced disgust and prejudice and cruelty her whole life. She has seen women who could change the world held back. 

It is a time of relative peace, but there are protests and there is talk of the economy crumbling. Morgana is no share-holder, not a company manager. She fears a bit, because everyday food and other necessaries are hard to get, but she knows they will pull through and rebuild. At the very least Mordred is out of the mines. She’s heard too many horror stories about cave-ins. Men buried alive. 

He died in the trenches like that once. 

The idea makes her feel sick. 

They keep a sort of truce, this trio of theirs. Morgana and Mordred still haven’t left. Merlin doesn’t seem inclined to make them. They don’t talk about what happened in the Alps. Somehow, it’s worse that way. 

She tries not to think about it. 

She sits awake at night anyways. 

Merlin doesn’t join her anymore. 

Mordred is sleeping less now, she’s noticed. It seems to be a common trait of magic-users, the nightmares and sleeplessness, and whatever Mordred’s been through isn’t helping any of it. Sometimes he sleeps on the couch and wakes up with eyes like quicksilver. Once he bit her hand when she tried to shake him awake, and she was left with marks like fangs on her hand. Merlin patched it up, and there was fear hiding in the worn creases of his face. 

Occasionally he teaches them things— disguise magic, this and that, a thousand useful tips from a more powerful man who’s learned them all the hard way. She’s a strong high priestess and the magic isn’t hard for her. On the other hand, Mordred struggles with it. She remembers him being more powerful than this, she remembers laying siege to castle walls with snarling chants and a hand in hers. Perhaps whatever monster he became drained some of that Druidic magic. 

(“Or repurposed it,” Merlin says when Morgana asks him. He doesn’t clarify further, but he spends the next two nights awake reading through Gaius’s vast tomes still left on the shelves. She leaves him a cup of tea every night. She’s not sure if he drinks it or not.) 

(She wonders what happened to Gaius. Merlin never talked of him, or Guinevere or the surviving knights. It might just be that he doesn’t want to remember the joy he lost— or he doesn’t want to remember what happened to them.) 

For a time, everything is peaceful, if awkward. She doesn’t have to face anything yet, she doesn’t want to. So she just enjoys what she can and tries to ignore the way that Merlin’s smile is often strained at the corners. 

Then the Second World War happens. This time, bombs are landing on London. Merlin and Mordred are away in the hospitals at all hours of the day. Morgana becomes the one to help in the streets, digging people out of the rubble and blocking bombs from landing with discreet shielding magic when no one can see her. She heals who she can on the street, but sometimes they die under her hands and every time it’s a new level of horror. 

The sound of warning fog horns and whistling in the air becomes her entire world. Mordred dies in one of the bomb strikes, it takes him a week to come back. It’s taking them longer and longer now, and they don’t know why. Morgana fears that one day they will run out of chances and do-overs. That one day they will be gone and never come back. 

The food is being rationed and oftentimes a meagre supper is all that’s on the table. Clothing is rationed, too, but she’s not as concerned about that. There are spells for things like that. But there aren’t spells for food. She learned that the hard way eons ago.

She does what she can and gives the leftover materials, some of the money she has stored away, to those who need it more than her and her boys. She defers their gratitude. She doesn’t need it. She’s seen people starve and freeze at home while war rages far too many times now. All she can do is do everything she can to change it. 

A bomb strike almost destroys their home. Merlin’s room has to be replaced. He starts sleeping in the living room, but “sleeping” is really a relative term for it. Most nights he lies awake and stares at the ceiling, or buries himself in times of books and piles of letters and telegrams and doesn’t look up until the sun is rising on a new day. She keeps making him tea each night. It’s too bitter at first, but she gets better at it. The food is rationed now, and the sugar and all the delicacies she would have taken for granted as a royal. Even shoes and clothes are rationed too. They’ve got an excess of those things, and they try to help. It’s not enough. How could it ever be? 

People die on the streets. Nightmares leave her crying. One day Mordred goes out and the bombs hit and he doesn’t come back for almost a month. She spends the time terrified and frantic that this time their luck has finally run out, that Mordred is gone for good. Merlin sits by her side and doesn’t say anything, just touches her shoulder and is  _ there  _ as a steady presence. 

_ My son, my son. My son, come back to me. Don’t let this be how it ends, not now, not like this.  _

He shows up on their doorstep with the same haunted eyes of the man who came back from the trenches. He was blown to pieces, he says. The thought makes her sick, but she hugs him hard and reminds herself that this is real, that they are okay. 

She passes into the drawing room, and out of the corner of her eye, she sees Merlin briefly wrap an arm around Mordred’s shoulder. Mordred is wide-eyed at the gesture, but he smiles a bit. Merlin smiles back, and she wonders if Merlin has changed in a way that she’s just been too blind to see. 

Too worried about herself, perhaps. 

They stick together after that. They call each other, tend telegrams and a few letters when Merlin departs to America for a half a year. He doesn’t say why, but there’s something frantic in his manner. She doesn’t question it. Well, she does, but she doesn’t voice her questions. He doesn’t owe her. And she has no right to bother him anyways. 

She spends the time reading or on the streets and in the hospital as a nurse. She hears horror stories of the Holocaust, of concentration camps, and decides to do what she can about it. She and Mordred disguise themselves, him as a soldier and her as an elderly workwoman. They smuggle out who they can, send messages to Merlin in America. The war winds down, starts to end. Morgana helps everyone she can, buries herself waist-deep in this horror because at the very least it will give someone else a chance. 

The Allies come through. They start liberating people at the camps. Morgana directs them. 

Mordred helps the Allies under a different uniform then, and another year passes by before they all meet in London again. The house is dusty and cold, but it is still their home. They sit in awkward silence for a while and it seems too quiet. They’ve become used to action. Morgana isn’t sure what life will be like without it. 

But slowly, things go back to normal. And there is a closeness between them all, there is a protectiveness and an easiness all at once. Not much has changed, not really. But yet-- 

But yet--

One day at Christmas, Merlin comes home with a gramophone. Mordred laughs long and hard for some reason, and Morgana smiles at it. He doesn’t laugh much more, none of them do. It’s nice to see him happy. They still celebrate Yule (they aren’t Christians after all, they are much older and more powerful, and they celebrate the Solstice as a gift day), though they say Yule is for “Pagans” nowadays. Morgana’s a little bitter about it. But those holidays still exist, and they are named. It is better than being forgotten. 

From that day forth, there’s music playing in the house. 

On New Year’s night, they’re all tipsy off of a few glasses of port and brandy, giggling and gleeful in the warmly-decorated living room. The music plays in the background and Merlin increases the volume while the snowflakes whirl outside. The fire crackles in the hearth. The music is on the soft side of lively, and Merlin pulls her into a whirling dance that sends them spinning around the room. They bump into the chairs and sofa and fall over themselves laughing. Mordred is doubled over wheezing with a glass of port that looks about to spill onto the sofa and Morgana yanks it out of his hand with magic, sets it on the table, and proceeds to knock into it herself when Merlin whirls them around in time with the music. The spilled wine soaks her skirts red but she just shakes her head and chuckles. She’s so happy she thinks she might burst. 

The next morning, she wakes up still in the previous night’s clothes with all of them asleep in the living room, foggy-headed and tired. But she didn’t have any nightmares. She slept content. And it looks like Mordred and Merlin are still doing the same, passed out on the sofa and the rug respectively. She moves a throw pillow under Merlin’s head and wanders into the kitchen to make tea. 

A few minutes later, Merlin joins her, blinking and running his hands through his unruly hair. His movements are practised as he starts cooking breakfast. He’s always done it without being asked, and she’s glad of it. He’s the best cook in the household. 

She passes him a cup, made with a dash of sugar now that some sugar is available again, and he watches it for a moment. “Thank you for the tea,” he says, and the words are heavier than just a casual thank you. Maybe he doesn’t mean just now. Maybe he had noticed her gestures of kindness, welcomed them.

Morgana doesn’t ask. She just smiles. “You’re welcome.”

He grins back. It’s a boyish grin she remembers from Camelot, bright and for once there’s nothing dark lingering in his eyes. He looks drained, but evidently they’re all hungover, judging by the loud groan a newly awoken Mordred gives from the other room. Merlin chuckles, and then she laughs, and they share a moment in the winter morning sunlight together. It feels peaceful and easy, the way things haven’t been for a long time.

And she’s still got wine on her skirt. 

Shit. 

She excuses herself, goes to change and freshen up some. Her room is right next to the living room, and through the admittedly thin walls she hears the conversation Merlin and Mordred strike up.

“Good god, what hour of the morning is it?” Mordred asks groggily.

“Late. I think we’ve all overslept.”

There’s the sound of a great catlike yawn, and then a sudden crashing noise like something being dropped on the floor. Merlin snaps Mordred’s name in an almost reprimanding tone, and she giggles out loud, because she remembers that exact tone from when Gaius would come storming down the hallways to rescue Merlin from whatever mischief he’d gotten up to. From a father to a son, and perhaps the cycle repeats. 

Mordred mumbles something that sounds vaguely like “sorry”, and she finishes changing in silence. She looks around her room. It’s not got much in it, only a few personal touches over the decades, some decor changes and assorted letters, outfits and perfumes. No furniture other than her bed, a desk and a chair. The door mirror is now missing after she shattered it after a particularly bad nightmare. She’d gotten glass in her hands. Merlin had pulled the glass out and cleaned them. She still has a couple of white scars on her hands. 

That’s the funny thing about her and Mordred’s resurrections; they retain all their scars. Mental as well as physical.

From the other room, the conversation starts up again. Mordred seems to be haranguing Merlin about breakfast and there are sounds of indignant squawking, another clatter. She finally leaves her room, walks back into the hallway where the conversation is clearer, and nearly bursts into laughter. 

“I swear, you’re like Gwaine, pestering me for food all the time--” There’s yet another crash and it sounds like Mordred is giggling. “Patience, child,  _ patience. _ ”

“I’m not a child!” Mordred protests.

“Then stop behaving like one!”

“I’ll have you know I’m-- many years old!”

“And I’m older than you, and I also don’t behave like a child, so sit down at the table or so help me god-- and stop stealing food!” Merlin gives a long-suffering sigh as Morgana makes her way down the hall to the kitchen. “I was  _ trying  _ to have some peace and quiet and now you come barging into the kitchen. Ye gods.”

“Ye gods? That’s a bit out of date, Merlin. And pardon me for being hungry.”

Merlin gives an overdramatic, hungover sort of groan. “Ah yes, the famous appetite of the knights of Camelot.”

“I was very tempted to make a joke there.”

“Try it and I’ll brain you with this soup ladle.”

“Alright, alright--”

Morgana waltzes into the kitchen, adopting a regal and indulgent sort of manner in jest. “Well, I see that--” She cuts off in the middle of her sentence, because Merlin is leaning on the counter, shaking with silent laughter, and Mordred is face-down on a plate of breakfast, his shoulders shaking. Merlin has a soup ladle in his grip, but his smile is gleeful and fond. The kitchen is in a state of disarray, with a newly chipped saucer on the floor alongside an abandoned piece of bread. 

It’s a domestic-looking disaster. 

Mordred looks up, and there are beans stuck to his face. The sight is the breaking point for Morgana and she collapses into a chair, giggling so hard it’s hard to breathe. He looks ridiculous. This is all ridiculous, how they went from sworn enemies to bickering over breakfast in their shared house. And yet, here they are. 

Merlin, shaking his head, sets a plate of food and a cup of tea in front of her. “Sorry. Mordred broke two of the saucers.”

“You technically broke one,” Mordred says, wiping his face with a napkin and Merlin waves it aside with a dramatic flair of his hand. She’s become accustomed to the gesture by now. He seems to enjoy the overdramatic. 

(The man was an enthusiast for Oscar Wilde, of all people. It’s to be expected, she supposes.)

She takes a bite of the food. It’s good-- Merlin’s cooking always is. Mordred had told her about when he was a Knight, when they’d go on some quest or another and Merlin would cook dinner for them. The Knights ate like horses, Merlin said once when he’d been tipsy late at night and fondly reminiscing over memories of Camelot. 

That was one of the only times she’s ever heard him talk about it. 

The other time was when she spoke of her lover, Lirah, who had an almost magical bit of grace hovering at her fingertips when she worked and woved. She had looked so similar to Gwen it had broken Morgana’s heart, and sometimes when she had woken Morgana from sleeping in their bed, it had taken a few delirious moments for her to remember that it was not a lost servant girl (a lover, a best friend, a piece of her--) who knelt among the bedclothes. She told Merlin as much. 

Merlin’s face had clouded with a deep sadness and he had gripped her hand from across the armchair, his brows wrinkled and understanding in his eyes. In that moment, he had looked old and weary and grieving. She still doesn’t want to see him make an expression like that again. He is meant to smile like sunshine, like glitter. 

The world is wearing him down. Wearing them both down. She had broken. She prays that it will not break him too. 

He hadn’t said much while they’d sat there, thinking of simple but beautiful dresses, of bouquets and blooms and a brilliantly kind smile. Morgana remembered an axe, of holding an inconsolable sobbing Gwen while blood ran down the cobblestones of Camelot’s square. He had touched his neck, like he was still wearing a neckerchief, and she saw him reach to his lips. 

They have so many things in common, the two of them. 

And they both mourn. 

Perhaps they always will. 

“I loved her,” she had said. 

Merlin nodded, bowed his head over his hands. He could have been a fallen god, painted in shades of dull gold and grey and black. Something like tears shone in his eyes before he hid them. “I know.”

He hadn’t said what he meant. But she knew. To this day at the breakfast table and in the moments and days that follow, she knows.

She knows these small moments of theirs, solidarity-- violets on her hat and a green carnation in his lapel at a dance or when they would go and visit other places in London early in the century, the more shady businesses in Soho where an occasional magic dealer would linger. How she’s had a lover beside her and Merlin has never so much as batted an eye. Men have flirted with him before. He’s turned most down. There’s something sad in his manner when he does. 

But she’s seen him with men and women both before, and she understands. Once they saw a broad man with close-cropped blond hair in one of the ruelles. She’d nearly thought him Arthur for a minute. Merlin had looked like he’d been punched in the chest. 

Those two left together that night. Morgana never dared ask. 

He’d worn red bandanas before, like his neckerchief when he was in Camelot. They still suited him, made him look younger, like the Merlin she’d once known. She found they meant more than that. 

She finds others when they visit America, secret societies of men and women who meet in taverns and inns, and talk amongst themselves, and there they are safe. There is something wonderful about it, the freedom and opportunity and the people she meets. Then the police come raiding their tavern and a riot starts, and Morgana joins along with them. Merlin does too, and Mordred, because these are their friends and their history and their love that they fight for. It’s about freedom, it’s about acceptance. Something they have never had as magic users. Something that they would face the possibility of not having again. So many like them haven’t gotten the same. 

So the three of them riot. They riot and Morgana wonders how they could have changed the world before if they’d stopped fighting each other and banded together. What could have been better. If the age of magic wouldn’t have ended and some wars wouldn’t have been fought. 

(She knows already that the answer is yes.)

They still don’t speak of the secrets and memories that lurk. Mordred says they should.

He’s right. But she doesn’t know how to. And what will she do if it all goes wrong?

What will she do if she loses another family now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: ah yes this will be a short fic maybe only about ten chapters  
> the fic: so anyways this friendship is becoming a five chapter slowburn and you still have the entire actual plot of the fic. it’s going to be thirty. fuck you


End file.
